


Breaking Bad Weather

by Assassin_J



Category: Assassin's Creed, Breaking Bad
Genre: Bar, Bartender Desmond, But No Actual Spoilers IMO, Crossover, Drinking & Talking, First Meeting, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Light Angst, Modern Day, New York City, Post-Breaking Bad, Pre-Assassin's Creed 1, Pseudonyms, References to Canon, To be continued..?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:52:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3478553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Assassin_J/pseuds/Assassin_J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>At first I thought this wouldn't be chronologically feasible, but I checked the Breaking Bad wiki, and the last episode ends in September 2011, while Desmond was (of course) kidnapped in September 2012, so this could legit happen yo.</p></blockquote>





	Breaking Bad Weather

"Beer me."

The bartender's reply was both casual and automatic. "ID?"

The customer gestured to his scruffy beard and the time-worn lines around his eyes. "Do I look underage to you?"

"No but it's bar policy. My boss would kill me if I didn't ID everyone."

"Boss would kill you, huh." The customer frowned and muttered "Somehow I doubt that" under his breath, but, nevertheless, he pulled out his driver's license and held it up.

The bartender hardly glanced at the card before nodding and waving his hand to give the all clear. "All right, Joseph, what kinda beer?"

At the sound of the name, the customer's mouth twitched slightly. "Don't care," he grunted. "Just gimme whatever you've got."

The bartender shrugged and brought out a Coors bottle. "You wanna open a tab?"

The customer sighed and nodded. "I'm gonna be sitting here a while trying to drown my sorrows."

"Hm. What kinda sorrows? Typical shit like getting dumped or something more interesting?"

"Dumped?" The customer let out a low bark of laughter. "I fucking **wish** I was dumped."

"So what happened?"

"It's a long fucking story."

The bartender swept one arm out to indicate the almost-deserted status of the club. "Does it look like I'm busy? This place is pretty much dead."

The customer winced mid-swig and then plonked the bottle firmly down on the bar. "Yo, don't talk to **me** about 'dead'!" There was fire in his eyes. "I've seen more death in the past few years than anyone should in their whole fuckin' **life**!"

"Oh... Sorry." The bartender stepped back a bit from the upset man, and tried changing the topic. "So... your license is from New Mexico?" Though he knew it was true, he inflected the statement like a question.

The customer grunted in the affirmative through a mouthful of beer.

"So... What brings you to the big rotten apple?" the bartender probed. "You here for a job, or just a change of scenery, or what?"

"Job. Heh." Chapped lips crinkled in a bitter smirk. "More like to get away from a job."

"That bad, huh? You had to move cross country to escape it?"

"You'd have done the same if you had my boss." The customer paused to take another swig. "Guy was a fuckin' lunatic. I dunno how I put up with it so long."

The bartender inched closer again. "What kinda work?"

The customer looked him square in the eye, as if sizing him up. Then he took another long drink, eventually draining the bottle. "Gimme another."

The bartender flipped the empty bottle into a bin and obliged him with a fresh one.

The customer took a snorting breath through his nose before replying to the question with a single word: "Chemistry."

"Chemistry?"

"Yeah."

"Cool."

Another smirk. "Yeah, I thought it would be 'cool' too. And it was, sometimes. The money sure was 'cool'. At least when the motherfucker actually paid me."

The bartender gave a nod of understanding.

"And he treated me like shit, too." The customer put on a gruff vocal impression. "Jesse, do this! Jesse, do that! Jesse, you're a worthless idiot who can't do anything right!"

"Jesse?" The bartender's soft brown eyes narrowed. "Your license says 'Joseph'."

The customer's brows twitched inward briefly. "My friends call me Jesse."

"Was this asshole boss one of your friends, then?" the bartender asked, doubt obvious in his tone.

The customer ignored this question and returned his attention to the beer.

The bartender decided it best to abandon that line of inquiry. "So..." He drummed his fingers on the counter, casting his gaze idly across the room. "New Mexico, huh?"

The customer rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm from New Mexico," he spat. "We've established that. You stupid or something?"

The bartender tapped his chest. "I'm from South Dakota myself."

The customer grunted again, but then gave an actual response. "So what happened to you? Why you here in 'the big rotten apple'?"

"Well, you had your crazy boss. I had crazy parents."

The customer made an acknowledging "mm" sound deep in his throat. "Abusive?" he asked after a few moments.

The bartender shook his head. "Nah, I wouldn't call it that. They were just... crazy controlling, and shit like that. I mean, Mom wasn't that bad, but Dad and all the rest were **terrible**."

The customer swallowed a mouthful of beer. "The rest... of your parents?"

"Rest of the folks they hung out with," the bartender clarified.

"Ah."

Another customer approached the bar: all raging red-blonde hair and form-fitting contours, driver's license already held out for cursory inspection. "Hey, Des."

The bartender smiled. "Hey there. You want the usual?"

She smiled back and put away her license. "You know it!"

The bartender shuffled a few feet down the counter to prepare her drink.

"Who's your friend here?"

The bartender looked up from pouring out Sprite. "Oh, this is Joseph, but he goes by 'Jesse'. Jesse- can I call ya Jesse?"

The first customer's mouth wrinkled in a slight frown. "You already did, so you might as well keep on."

"Okay, Jesse, this fine lady is Andrea."

Jesse's beer slipped from his hands and dribbled on the counter as he deflated and laid his heavy head down on one arm. "Oh god, Andrea... I'm sorry!" he sobbed. "I'm so, so sorry!"

"Uh, what are you sorry for?" the regular asked, daring to put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Not you!" Jesse forcefully shook her off. "A different Andrea... **My** Andrea." His body quaked with the sorrow churning within.

"Um, he's not in a good mood right now," the bartender said in a half-whisper to the regular. "He's dealing with a lotta shit."

She let out a soft "Ah" and collected her red beverage, then took it to the other end of the bar.

Jesse sniffled and mumbled out a few more moans of anguish as the bartender mopped up the small spill and disposed of the now-empty bottle.

[A new song started thumping and buzzing from the speakers in the ceiling.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-IWRmpefzE) "Ooh, this is a good one," the bartender said, reaching over to a control on the wall and turning it up a few notches. "Maybe a little Knife Party'll cheer you up."

Electronic bass beats strode through the air, joined by a mid-tempo male voice with a vague accent behind his rapid wordflow. The bartender swayed to the rhythm.

 _Do not burn girl I'll be nasty let it down_  
_The sweat drops from the dark me love me sanity  
_ _Let me take tha matches down you will never let it down_

_Bo- bo- bo- bo- bo- bonfire!_

Jesse scrunched his face and covered one ear. "Ugh."

"You don't like it?" the bartender asked, half-shouting to be heard through the din.

"Sure don't! Turn that shit down, yo!"

"If you insist." The bartender dialed the volume back to its previous low level. "I mean, you risked your life for my country so I guess I should respect your taste in music, even if I disagree."

Jesse gave him a puzzled squint.

"So, were you in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or...?" The bartender let the question hang in the air open-ended.

"None of the above." Jesse thrust out his hand and snapped his fingers. "Gimme another beer."

The bartender served him a Heineken this time. "So where did you serve? You one of those soldiers that just holds down the forts stateside?"

"I'm no soldier." Jesse drank deeply of his new beer.

"Oh." The bartender seemed to not know where to go from here. The dull dubstep still pulsed in the background behind the gentle clink-chatter-laughter of other bar patrons. He drummed his fingers on the counter to the beat of _sweat drops from the dark me love me sanity_.

Jesse was silent for a minute, savoring the chill of the beer in his hands, in his mouth, in his stomach. As the Knife Party song faded to an end, the words "You ever killed anyone?" spilled out of him.

"Huh?" The bartender looked up to a sudden intense stare.

"You ever watched someone die right before your eyes?" Jesse's piercing eyes were the color of the roiling ocean; his words were heavy and deliberate. "Ever seen an innocent kid shot dead like it was nothing?"

"...No," the bartender breathed shakily. "I- I never... any of that stuff."

"It changes you, man." A stray droplet of Heineken clung stubbornly to a hair just above Jesse's lip.

"Oh. I, uh... I bet it does." The bartender's face seemed stuck between emotions.

"That shit fuckin' changes you," Jesse reaffirmed.

The bartender slowly inched away from him again, eyes fixed on the droplet in the mustache. "You got a sober ride home?" His voice was ever-so-slightly squeaky now.

"You guys got cabs in this bitch of a city, I know that for a fact," Jesse said, a vague tint of humor creeping in. "I almost got ran the fuck over by one earlier today."

"Right, I know, I just-" The bartender rubbed the back of his neck. "I- It's bar policy. If you have three or more drinks I gotta ask."

Jesse inclined the bottle a few degrees toward the bartender and gave him a half-smile. "Don't get your panties in a twist. I'm not gonna get shitfaced. I'm gonna have this one, and maybe one more, and then I'm out." He took another, slower drink. "Out on my own in the big rotten apple."

The bartender opened his mouth a fraction, but no words came out at first. Then he grabbed a napkin and scrawled a series of angular numbers and a name before proffering it to the customer. "Here. If you ever wanna... talk or something."

Jesse wrinkled his nose.

"I mean, I know what it's like to be all alone in 'this bitch of a city'," the bartender said with a low chuckle. "You left everything behind, it sounds like. You're starting fresh over, since you got a ton of shit in your past.... If you ever needa talk to someone. Just talk, bounce ideas offa someone, get stuff off your chest..." He gave a cautious smile. "I'm good at keeping secrets, I promise."

Jesse's mouth curled in a slight smile as well. "All right..." He picked up the napkin and glanced at it, "...Desmond." Then he folded it and slid the fragile rectangle of white into his shirt pocket. "Yo, I'm gonna hold you to that promise, man."

**Author's Note:**

> At first I thought this wouldn't be chronologically feasible, but I checked the Breaking Bad wiki, and the last episode ends in September 2011, while Desmond was (of course) kidnapped in September 2012, so this could legit happen yo.


End file.
